Union bosses have spoken of “more misery for our members” after it was announced 350 jobs could go at a North East council.

South Tyneside Council is to begin formal discussions with the trade unions including Unison over the potential losses which it says is part of its budget-setting process.

The local authority says it has to make savings of at least £22m in addition to over £100m which it has saved over the last four years.

How many jobs will go will not be known until later in the budgeting process, but the council estimates it will be around 350.

It says it will make every effort to avoid compulsory redundancies by use of voluntary redundancies, early retirement and deletion of vacancies.

However Mervyn Butler, branch secretary for Unison, said after 800 job losses so far at the council since 2010 as a result of Government austerity measures, compulsory redundancies could be unavoidable.

“It is becoming more likely all the time,” he said. “Clearly there will be less and less volunteers as those who could take advantage of early retirement have left the council.”

Mr Butler said the speed of the job cuts - just 12 months to shed around 350 jobs - is a great concern.

On August 31, 2012, South Tyneside Council announced the same amount of job losses over 24 months, and that period ends this month, just as the fresh announcement is made.

However, it is thought only 260 jobs went in the first cull.

Mr Butler added: “The job threat is across the board - apart from where the council provides a statutory service like in social work.

“As you can imagine, the announcement has hit staff morale.”

The council is now informing the Government of the number of jobs that might be affected.

It has to submit a HR1 form - an advance notice of redundancies - to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to enable any consultations to take place with staff and trade unions over any potential redundancies.

Coun Ed Malcolm, lead member for Resources and Innovation at South Tyneside Council, said: “Let me start off by emphasising that we will do everything we can do to reduce the 350 figure and wherever possible avoid compulsory redundancies.

“We appreciate this is a tough time for our staff and we will work with them and the Trade Unions to lessen the impact wherever we can.

“The HR1 form is a legal requirement and a formal process we must undertake. Our estimate is that up to 350 council jobs could be affected in the budget-setting process and we have now informed the Government of that figure.

“We are still working on our budget for next year and we do not relish having to put a figure on the potential number of jobs that might be affected relatively early in our budget planning process.

“As everyone knows we continue to be subjected to unprecedented Government cuts and are doing all we can to minimise the impact on frontline services.

“We are not yet in a position to confirm a definite number, as this is obviously dependent on the decisions made by councillors around the budget.”

Mr Butler said the union added: “We say councils in the North have suffered disproportionately in job losses because of Government cuts.”